News:

"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, leaves a photo opportunity with the female Democratic members of the 116th US House of Representatives outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 4, 2019. SAUL LOEB / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress, told Anderson Cooper that high tax rates on the super-rich would help fund the ambitious plan to combat the threat of climate change known as the “Green New Deal.”

In an upcoming 60 Minutes interview, set to air this Sunday, the 29-year-old Democratic socialist says the “Green New Deal,” which aims to eliminate carbon emissions within 12 years, is “going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now.”

“What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?” Ocasio-Cortez asks.

To pay for the deal, Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the progressive tax rate system in the 1960s and proposed the idea of tax rates as high as 70 percent on the super-rich.

“You know, you look at our tax rates back in the ’60s. And when you have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate . . . let’s say, from zero to $75,000, may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But once you get to, like, the tippy tops, on your ten-millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.”

“That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that, as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more,” she added.

Cooper 🐵 replied that she was proposing a “radical agenda, compared to the way politics 😈 is done right now.”

“I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security. That is radical.”

The freshman Congresswoman has emerged as a national progressive firebrand and has captured the attention of Americans of all political stripes. Her suggestion to tax the ultra-rich as much as 70 percent is likely to get as much attention as the recently-revealed and now-viral clip of a college-aged Ocasio-Cortez mimicking an iconic scene from the iconic 1980’s movie “The Breakfast Club.”

Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into the House of Representatives on Thursday as Democrats reclaimed control of the lower chamber. During the Democratic primary in June, the political novice unseated incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth highest-ranking Democrat in the House. Ocasio-Cortez is a self-identified Democratic Socialist and supports universal health care, tuition-free public universities and criminal justice reform.

From Donald Trump, Karl Rove, and Fox News to an invigorated progressive movement and many newly elected members of Congress, many are saying that socialism will be the issue in the 2020 elections – a viewer mailbag segment with Dharna Noor and Paul Jay

Story Transcript 🕯️

DHARNA NOOR: It’s The Real News. I’m Dharna Noor. And I’m back in the studio with our editor-in-chief, Paul Jay.

For the past few days we’ve been taking a look at viewer questions and comments from The Real News Network. And we’re here to discuss some of those. How’s it going, Paul?

PAUL JAY: Good.

DHARNA NOOR: So we recently were looking at a segment that you did with Francesca Fiorentini on November 2, which was called Trump Defines Socialism as a Key Issue in the 2018 Elections. And often when we put socialism in a headline or discuss socialism in pieces we get lots of viewer comments that are pretty skeptical. They say socialism doesn’t work, it’s never worked. Look at, for instance, a country like Venezuela. What goes through your mind when you see things like that? What’s your response to those sorts of critical viewers?

PAUL JAY: Well, first of all, let me say again what I said to, you know, some of the other mailbag things. I’m giving you my opinion. Real News does not have an opinion on whether socialism is a good thing or a bad thing.

DHARNA NOOR: But Paul Jay might.

PAUL JAY: But I do. And Real News does have an editorial guideline that we should try to follow evidence and facts. And so my response is, and may be the the most common one these days–and by the way, everybody all of a sudden thinks socialism is the thing to talk about. Trump, as you said, it’s the issue of the 2018 elections. Karl Rove 😈 wrote an op ed saying it’s going to be the issue of the 2020 elections. Fox News 👹 can’t stop talking about socialism, of course, how bad it is.

DHARNA NOOR: And the Democratic Socialists of America has grown in membership. We have people really excited about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-avowed democratic socialist.

PAUL JAY: Who Tom Perez says is the future of the Democratic Party. There’s arguments about what is social democratic socialism versus socialism, and so on. So it’s a big topic. Everybody’s talking about it. And so we’re we’re going to talk about it too. And the reason I think everybody’s talking about it is not because socialism failed in Venezuela, which is a particular case. And it did, in a sense, fail in Venezuela. But we’re talking about it because capitalism is failing. And the reason socialism has come again to such a forefront of conversation is because capitalism is out of solutions. You can barely talk about an area of life which is critical to our existence, whether it’s climate, whether it’s the threat of accidental nuclear war, if it’s the threat of financial meltdown and financialization, whether it’s the coming of artificial intelligence which, at the very least, could be replacing millions and millions of jobs. Mass unemployment. Like, take all the big picture questions. Capitalism is not offering solutions to any of it.

But let’s say, yes, socialism failed in a lot of countries where it was attempted. But before we kind of get into that, capitalism has failed on a far grander scale. Because you got to ask, you know, capitalism succeeded for whom?Failed for whom? Capitalism gave us World War I, and capitalism gave us World War II. Capitalism has given us endless wars since World War II. I mean, you know, you can go on, from Vietnam, to Korea, to Iraq and Syria. I mean, you can’t end–capitalism has given us endless numbers of outright fascist dictatorships. Capitalism gave us Hitler. Capitalism gave us Mussolini. Go on with all the Latin American dictatorships and capitalism gave us kleptocracy in Africa. You go on and on. Capitalism has been, for most people, a disaster, and continues to be for the majority the people of the world.

Now, if you’re an American, and particularly if you’re a white American, but not only, capitalism hasn’t been so bad until recently. Especially after World War II, there was a big expansion of the United States. The United States became the global hegemon. The United States grew into a position where it could essentially plunder much of the wealth of the world. And the elites, the oligarchs the United States, did share some of that wealth; at least with the upper stratum of the working class. You know, workers living and working in critical areas of the economy. The auto industry, transport, telecommunications, where workers had real leverage, because if the workers went on strike in those sectors they could close down whole sections of the economy. And of course the Democratic Party, that was an important base for the Democrats to get elected, this upper stratum. Some people called it the labor aristocracy.

So yeah, so capitalism worked–and even you could say empire 🦍😈👹💵🎩🍌🏴‍☠️🚩 worked–for a large section of the American population for quite a while. Western Europe, for a lot of period of this expansion, most of Western Europe’s standard of living was pretty good. The kind of social democracy that developed in Europe, which is important to distinguish that from what most people think socialism is. Social democracy, European style, the governments that came to power, is essentially just reining in some of the excesses of capitalism. That’s their words. But it continues concentration of ownership, private ownership, and concentration of political power. And you can see even in Europe eventually, you know, the savagery of capitalism asserts itself as soon as you brought online the availability of getting cheap labor from China and other places, and you could start undercutting the wages both of American, Canadian, and West European workers.

So when you start assessing whether socialism failed in a Venezuela, or even a Soviet Union, or whatever, we have to first of all acknowledge that yeah, more or less, it did. I think one example which I think was, you know, relatively positive was Cuba, but a tiny place that could never withstand the global forces without some big ally. Cuba’s a long conversation. It’s certainly no utopia. But the main point is that when we look at this issue of what socialism is, and does it make sense, and is it possible, the starting point is the absolute failure of capitalism. Even though, sure, it made some people rich. And somebody wrote in we have cars and nice houses. But how many people lost their cars and nice houses in the 2007-08 crash?

DHARNA NOOR: That was Mike Newman commented.

PAUL JAY: And that’s coming again.

DHARNA NOOR: So I think, again, there are viewers who are writing in and saying that this is kind of a whitewashing of socialism. Somebody wrote in saying, well, coming from a socialist country–they don’t say which one–I can tell you that it’s terrible, very very bad, but not so different in some aspects from the U.S. present system. And even–I mean, Francesca, in your segment with her, mentioned that the basis of the Venezuelan economy, though of course more democratic, was based on the extraction of oil. Which, of course is, I think we can both agree, a flaw of Venezuela. So what’s your response to people who say, well, I lived there, or I went through it, and it wasn’t so great?

PAUL JAY: Well, you know, you have to–and I haven’t walked a mile in those people’s shoes. And for example, if you were living-

DHARNA NOOR: You’re from Canada. That’s not a socialist utopia?

PAUL JAY: No. And that is an important point, actually, that just because you have a socialized healthcare system doesn’t make the country socialist. But listen, if I had grown up in the Soviet Union, if I’d grown up in Eastern Europe, if I’d been who I am, I mean, I could likely have been in jail. So I understand the sort of anger and rage, even, people had to how bureaucratised, especially in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it got. The extent to which it became very much like a police state. I think it’s sometimes exaggerated, especially in Eastern Europe. I think it’s very exaggerated in Cuba. It’s, you know, Cuba is a kind of unique situation.

But Venezuela, just to take it, because that’s the one they’re talking about all these–socialism is not just somebody has a good idea, oh, let’s have, let’s have a socialist system, any more than capitalism was just a good idea. Oh, feudalism. Yeah, kings, and aristocracy, and lords. You know what? I’ve got an idea for a whole new system. Let’s have capitalism. It doesn’t begin as an idea. It begins as an objective process of how human society develops, and how human economy, the economies of human society, develop. And you know, we learn how to make tools, and now we don’t want to have–you know, our tribal society that was built on just gathering berries and, you know, running around chasing animals. All of a sudden we had agriculture and animal husbandry. And our society changes. And with that the ideas change. So we start to become conscious of what’s possible because of objective developments. It’s not all just springing from people’s heads.

So to apply that idea to Venezuela, I mean, Hugo Chavez comes to power because neoliberalism–and one of the first big mass protests against this hypercapitalist policies was in Venezuela prior to Chavez getting elected, and prior to his involvement in the attempted coup. But these policies were destroying Venezuela. And people, you know, they rose up against these policies. Hypercapitalism wasn’t working. And the exploitation of the oil resources was, you know, a tiny elite was benefiting from it, and people were conscious of this.

So sure, socializing the benefits of that oil, it was obvious as a way out of the situation. You have a movement, and you have leaders that emerge from the movement, and it is what it is, meaning, you know, it wasn’t–they didn’t have some great worked-out plan. It wasn’t you know a party where they had economists and all kinds of people to figure out what to do once you get elected. You know, stuff happens. They may have been been as surprised as anyone that they actually wound up running the country. And with all its defects and all its weaknesses and all its warts, the Venezuelan or Bolivarian revolution, it accomplished a lot.And it wasn’t just about spreading more of the oil money around. There was, and I guess still is–I haven’t been for a while, and I don’t have the same kind of a handle on it–but the kind of community decision-making, community governance at the local levels. There was a, there were real experiments and development, developing different forms of democracy, which has to be part of the socialistic conversation. Because, like, you have a big state-owned sector in China, right. But you don’t have any democracy to speak of. And you have a class of billionaires that have emerged that run the Communist Party.

So I don’t know what kind of socialism it is. It’s not socialism just because you have state ownership. And on the other hand, there’s a certain amount of planning going on in China. People’s standard of living is going up. These are complicated processes, and we need to analyze them as such. But I’ll go back to where it was in the beginning. The reason we need to have this conversation of what does a modern socialist system look like, and how will it operate, and what are the features of it–you know, we talk about even the United States is a mixed economy. There’s socialistic features. We’ve got a publicly-owned post office. We have public libraries, and schools, and such. Why? Because it made so much sense. But the same sense that it made to do that has made sense to have socialized healthcare in virtually every advanced capitalist country. It makes sense here. But once that makes sense, so does banking. Why would you let big banks 👹💵🎩🍌🏴 blackmail the whole society and whole economy so that they can go speculate? So it makes sense. You should have socialized banking.

DHARNA NOOR: Yeah. Or here in Baltimore, Baltimore recently became the first major city in the U.S. to ban water privatization. And in my reporting on this I found a lot of people–people in Baltimore are generally pretty fed up with the Department of Public Works because there have been so many instances of, you know, false bills that have been sent to people. The price of water has gone up so much. And so many people I spoke with would say, well, public ownership shouldn’t really be on the table because, you know, we have a publicly controlled system right now. It’s not doing very well. But I think the point that I want to make is that just because not privatizing doesn’t fix everything doesn’t mean it’s not the right first step. I mean, the statistics show that the price of water goes up across the United States when a private 😈 system does come in.

PAUL JAY: And there’s cities that privatized and went back again because it was such a failure.

DHARNA NOOR: Sure.

PAUL JAY: I guess I just want to end on where I started. It’s not just some intellectual conversation, is socialism good or bad. Yeah, there’s been–as, frankly, any major transformation of human society–there’s going to be tremendous fallout and weaknesses and stupidities. Especially if you talk about the Soviet Union building, trying to build socialism in what was a very backward country. And that was a matter of great debate at the time.

But we need to look at this. We need to talk about it, because capitalism has failed.It’s failed most of the population of this world for at least the last hundred years. But most importantly, it has no solutions to the actual threat to us as human society. Capitalism is completely out of steam with the most urgent threats facing us. So this is not just some idea, I mean, cafe conversation. This is about our existence or not. And unless somebody has some other idea, and I don’t think there is, when you look at what there is, you need to take what–you’ve got to break up the concentration of ownership. Because with concentration of ownership goes concentrated political power. Everybody understands that. But there’s no way to weigh against that without public ownership. How else do you break up concentrated ownership? It’s not because you’re going to give everybody a share of a company. That’s not going to happen. The only counterbalance, counterweight, to concentrated private ownership is public ownership.

On the other hand, public ownership in a small number of hands, like a single-party state or some of the models of the 20th century, that’s as dangerous. Because concentrated power, even if it’s in the name of socialism, will also be a disaster.Will be a–you know, become a dictatorship. Because concentrated ownership equals concentrated political power. So we’ve got to look at how does this public ownership look in a way that’s very diversified? You know, whether it’s ownership at a city level, at a state level, at the federal level when necessary. Whether it’s workers co-ops, whether it’s regional conglomerations.

But you know, but I’ve said this before. We’re in an era now, because of artificial intelligence, where you could coordinate an economy like that. You could have a Green New Deal which is mostly built out of public ownership in many ways, so that it doesn’t get too concentrated, and still coordinate that. I don’t think it was ever possible in human history to have the kind of socialism that could also be democratic. And as I said before, I don’t think there’s any choice to this. The alternative is we’re not going to have civilization at all.

DHARNA NOOR: Right. Thanks very much, Paul.

Again, we’re in the middle of our end of the year fundraising campaign right now. We’re going to keep doing this. Paul and I are going to keep discussing your viewer comments and questions. So if you have any comments or questions about this or anything else, put them down below, and please support The Real News Network. We don’t take any corporate funding or government funding, and we don’t sell ads, which means that the only people we have to answer to are you. So please help us make Real News, and stay in touch.

The government has responded to our demands and is shutting down the immigrant children's prison in Tornillo, Texas. Most of the children have already been allowed to go live with their sponsors pending their asylum hearings. More are scheduled for release in just a few days.

Thank you for helping us achieve this remarkable historic success!

OUR JOB IS NOT DONE.Many thousands of children remain imprisoned at other detention facilities. 😱 We have already started to contact senators and representatives to urge them to pass legislation to free these other children, reverse the policies that have led to their confinement, and make the changes to our immigration policies that are so urgently needed.

In order to demonstrate the support that we have for these demands, we will be delivering to Congress the petition that you and more than 65,000 other people signed.

In coming days, we'll be back in touch to ask you to be part of our ongoing efforts. In the meantime, be encouraged by knowing that once again the people have prevailed and have brought about change—and you helped make it happen.

Republicans are scared. The incoming group of progressive U.S. Representatives represents a massive shift away from business as usual in Washington.

One newly-sworn in Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), is under fire from Republican lawmakers and Wall Street alike for her calls for a 70% marginal tax rate on incomes over $10 million. But a 70% tax rate on the top income bracket is not at all new. In fact, it was that rate in 1980, and in the 1950s and 1960s the top tax rate was 91%.

So why is Rep. Ocasio-Cortez under attack? Republicans are scared that a young, powerful, woman of color is about to disrupt Wall Street’s lock on Congress and have the American people cheering alongside her.

Americans overwhelmingly believe that the wealthy and corporations need to pay their fair share of taxes. (That’s a major reason Trump’s tax cuts were such a flop in last year’s election.) And when they do, we can invest in our country’s future including expanding access to healthcare, universal pre-K education, a Green New Deal, infrastructure and more.

Americans for Tax Fairness is providing activists and elected officials alike with the research, advocacy and mobilization to back-up our demands that the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share. And we need your help to support our champions in Congress as we work together to repeal and replace Trump’s tax scam benefiting the well-off.

Americans for Tax Fairness is providing activists and elected officials alike with the research, advocacy and mobilization to back up our demands that the rich and corporations pay their fair share. And we need your help to support our champions in Congress as we work together to repeal and replace Trump’s tax scam benefiting the well-off.

In Response to Lies and Hate, Let Me Make Some Things Clear About My Climate Strike

Common Dreams Feb. 04, 2019 09:07AM EST

"We children shouldn't have to do this. But since almost no one is doing anything, and our very future is at risk, we feel like we have to continue." Photo: @GretaThunberg

By Greta Thunberg

If everyone listened to the scientists and the facts that I constantly refer to—then no one would have to listen to me or any of the other hundreds of thousands of school children on strike for the climate across the world. Then we could all go back to school.

Recently I've seen many rumors circulating about me and enormous amounts of hate. This is no surprise to me. I know that since most people are not aware of the full meaning of the climate crisis (which is understandable since it has never been treated as a crisis) a school strike for the climate would seem very strange to people in general.

So let me make some things clear about my school strike.

In May 2018 I was one of the winners in a writing competition about the environment held by Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish newspaper. I got my article published and some people contacted me, among others was Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland. He had some kind of group with people, especially youth, who wanted to do something about the climate crisis.

I had a few phone meetings with other activists. The purpose was to come up with ideas of new projects that would bring attention to the climate crisis. Bo had a few ideas of things we could do. Everything from marches to a loose idea of some kind of a school strike (that school children would do something on the schoolyards or in the classrooms). That idea was inspired by the Parkland Students, who had refused to go to school after the school shootings.

I liked the idea of a school strike. So I developed that idea and tried to get the other young people to join me, but no one was really interested. They thought that a Swedish version of the Zero Hour march was going to have a bigger impact. So I went on planning the school strike all by myself and after that I didn't participate in any more meetings.

When I told my parents about my plans they weren't very fond of it. They did not support the idea of school striking and they said that if I were to do this I would have to do it completely by myself and with no support from them.

On August 20, 2018 I sat down outside the Swedish Parliament. I handed out fliers with a long list of facts about the climate crisis and explanations on why I was striking. The first thing I did was to post on Twitter and Instagram what I was doing and it soon went viral. Then journalists and newspapers started to come. A Swedish entrepreneur and business man active in the climate movement, Ingmar Rentzhog, was among the first to arrive. He spoke with me and took pictures that he posted on Facebook. That was the first time I had ever met or spoken with him. I had not communicated or encountered with him ever before.

Many people love to spread rumors saying that I have people "behind me" or that I'm being "paid" or "used" to do what I'm doing. But there is no one "behind" me except for myself. My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation.

I am not part of any organization. I sometimes support and cooperate with several NGOs that work with the climate and environment. But I am absolutely independent and I only represent myself. And I do what I do completely for free, I have not received any money or any promise of future payments in any form at all. And nor has anyone linked to me or my family done so.

And of course it will stay this way. I have not met one single climate activist who is fighting for the climate for money. That idea is completely absurd.

Furthermore, I only travel with permission from my school and my parents pay for tickets and accommodations.

My family has written a book together about our family and how I and my sister Beata have influenced my parents' way of thinking and seeing the world, especially when it comes to the climate. And about our diagnoses. That book was due to be released in May. But since there was a major disagreement with the book company, we ended up changing to a new publisher and so the book was released in August instead.

Before the book was released my parents made it clear that their possible profits from the book, Scener ur hjärtat, will be going to eight different charities working with environment, children with diagnoses and animal rights.

And yes, I write my own speeches. But since I know that what I say is going to reach many, many people I often ask for input. I also have a few scientists that I frequently ask for help on how to express certain complicated matters. I want everything to be absolutely correct so that I don't spread incorrect facts, or things that can be misunderstood.

Some people mock me for my diagnosis. But Asperger is not a disease, it's a gift. People also say that since I have Asperger I couldn't possibly have put myself in this position. But that's exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been "normal" and social I would have organized myself in an organization, or started an organization by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing I did this instead. I was so frustrated that nothing was being done about the climate crisis and I felt like I had to do something, anything. And sometimes NOT doing things—like just sitting down outside the parliament—speaks much louder than doing things. Just like a whisper sometimes is louder than shouting.

Also, there is one complaint that I "sound and write like an adult." And to that I can only say; don't you think that a 16-year-old can speak for herself? There's also some people who say that I oversimplify things. For example when I say that "the climate crisis is a black and white issue"; "we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases"; and "I want you to panic." But that I only say because it's true. Yes, the climate crisis is the most complex issue that we have ever faced and it's going to take everything from our part to "stop it." But the solution is black and white; we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Because either we limit the warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, or we don't. Either we reach a tipping point where we start a chain reaction with events way beyond human control, or we don't. Either we go on as a civilization, or we don't. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

And when I say that I want you to panic I mean that we need to treat the crisis as a crisis. When your house is on fire you don't sit down and talk about how nice you can rebuild it once you put out the fire.

If your house is on fire you run outside and make sure that everyone is out while you call the fire department. That requires some level of panic.

There is one other argument that I can't do anything about. And that is the fact that I'm "just a child and we shouldn't be listening to children." But that is easily fixed—just start to listen to the rock solid science instead. Because if everyone listened to the scientists and the facts that I constantly refer to—then no one would have to listen to me or any of the other hundreds of thousands of school children on strike for the climate across the world. Then we could all go back to school.

I am just a messenger, and yet I get all this hate. I am not saying anything new, I am just saying what scientists have repeatedly said for decades. And I agree with you, I'm too young to do this. We children shouldn't have to do this. But since almost no one is doing anything, and our very future is at risk, we feel like we have to continue.

And if you have any other concern or doubt about me, then you can listen to my TED talk here (or below), in which I talk about how my interest for the climate and environment began.

On Friday, a group of California kids and teens working with the Sunrise Movement met with Senator Dianne Feinstein 😈, hoping to convince her to support the Green New Deal.

Instead, they got a lesson in why Washington, D.C., has failed to handle the climate crisis for so long.

She blamed the Republicans. She told the young people that they were being politically unrealistic. She said she wouldn't listen to them because "you didn't vote for me."(1)

But the Sunrise Movement accomplished something big at that meeting: They showed the whole country that to solve the climate crisis, senators like Dianne Feinstein need serious grassroots pressure -- and we're turning up the heat.

Here's what the billboard will look like. Can you imagine this over the Bay Bridge? It'll be amazing:

But the Sunrise Movement accomplished something big at that meeting: They showed the whole country that to solve the climate crisis, senators like Dianne Feinstein need serious grassroots pressure -- and we're turning up the heat.

Here's what the billboard will look like. Can you imagine this over the Bay Bridge? It'll be amazing:

http://ScientistsWarning.TV/ - Today our little climate giant, Greta Thunberg, is joined by her father, Svante to talk about her path from an unknown Swedish school girl to an internationally recognized climate leader. If governments don't give a damn about her future, why should she give a damn about their laws! Svante discusses how Greta's passion for the truth about climate has changed the family's lives. Very compelling.

The white supremacist killerkilled at least 41 at one mosque and went to drive to a second mosque. Inside that second mosque was 48-year-old Abdul Aziz, there at a service with his four sons and about 80 other people. Aziz is a refugee from Afghanistan.

He heard gunshots, looked out a window, and saw the killer, armed with an assault rifle, running toward the front door. So what did he do? He attacked the killer!

Mr. Aziz didn’t run away from the murderer, he ran toward him. We should know his name. Now see and hear him for yourself: